I recently installed Mandrake 10.0 as a dual-boot along with Windows XP Home on my laptop, but decided against it and removed it.

LILO was installed, of course, but now that Linux is off my system it's not neccissary. Thanks to Google, I've found many guides on how to uninstall LILO. Unfortunately, there's a catch...

My laptop is a Sony Vaio PCG-FRV37. This model comes with neither a Windows XP install CD nor a floppy drive. It also comes with an unknown password for Windows XP's administrator account. On top of that, Windows XP (as I'm sure you know) does not include DOS. All of the methods for removing LILO that I've seen require one of these three things.

I'm hoping that someone here can either supply me with an alternative method for removing LILO, or, failing that, a method to recover my XP Administrator password.

Thanks in advance for anyone that can help.

Hi,

you can remove lilo :

start the computer with a DOS boot disk

and type

fdisk /mbr

I know there should be a better way to remove Lilo, but unfortunately I haven't used it yet, somehow I was stuck with GRUB, and since it works well with starting WinXP,2000,98 etc...oh and by the way, my System's hard drive configuration is, 1.Primary WinXP [60GB], 2 Secondary 80GB...3 Primary CD-ROM [Teac], 4 Secondary Linux [20GB], I know this is not good, to use cd and hd on same cable, but in my case I had no other option,...but soon I will buy myself a new harddrive...120GB hopefully

you can install grub as described on this page :

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multiboot-with-GRUB-2.html


Sincerely
Robert B

ps.: make sure that you understand everything on the grub install page, .... I would wait a day if I were you, to see if someone with more experience then me, comes up with some better idea, I mean the above mentioned guide should work for you, but since I never tried it myself, I cannot guarante anything for you.

Hi,

oh , so you have no floppy drive ...no problemo

then you should create a boot cd, you can create it with Ahead Nero 5.x ... or 6.x


just make sure CD is the first boot drive in BIOS...

sincerely
Robert B

It just so happens that Mandrake has a Restore Windows Boot Loader option in it's rescue mode.

1. Boot from the Mandrake 10 CD-1 ... at the initial screen , press F1. (If your PC won't boot from CD-1, boot from CD-2 ...press F1 at the initial screen)

2. At the boot: prompt, type linux rescue and press enter.

3. If you had to boot from CD-2, Answer that the install is from CDROM ... then when asked, swap in CD-1 and press Retry. (If you were able to boot from CD-1, you won't have this step)

4. Select the Restore Windows Boot Loader Option with the arrow key and press enter.

If you have an administrative account in WinXP (ie your user is the Administrators group, but not the Administrator user) ... then you can go to:

Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management

then select:

Open the Local Users and Groups section, then open users, then Right Click on the Administrator user select Set Password.

Change the Administrator user's password to what ever you want.

Wow, you guys are waaayyy more helpful and friendly than I expected. Makes me regret my decision to uninstall linux.

Maybe I'll give it a shot on my desktop computer sometime soon.



Edit: Just want to update and say that it worked 100%. Thanks again for your help!

You're welcome ... glad it worked

what do you mean winxp no dos???

go to run op ... type cmd or command and poff!!! dos biger than life

steve

Steven ... I think he meant in relation to using fdisk to fix the MBR. There is no fdisk in WinXp. You are obviously correct that there is a cmd prompt (32-bit) and command prompt (16-bit) in Windows XP (Actually the cmd prompt is in WinNt, Win2K, WinXP, Win2003 ... and the command prompt is in all versions of windows since Win95).